The present invention relates in general to food processing, and in particular to a new and useful method of forming viscous, sticky and plastically deformable food material into globular or spherical shapes.
Conventional apparatus for forming viscous and plastically deformable food material into a globular shape such as pan rounders, inverted cone rounders, and seamless cutters, have had difficulty in forming markedly sticky, plastically deformable food materials into a globular shape. For this reason, so-called "no stick" surfaces have been utilized to manufacture such apparatus, for example polytetrafluoroethylene (Teflon), in an attempt to avoid the adhesion of sticky and plastic food materials to the apparatus.
These attempts, however, have resulted in higher costs for manufacture of such apparatus and, moreover, adhesion to the apparatus has not been prevented for food materials which are more viscous than plastic. Specifically, it has been impossible to turn portions of plastic food materials such as truffle paste, comprising hydrophilic and oleophilic materials blended with each other, into spheres or globules. Such food possesses markedly viscous properties and, therefore, manual work has been required for globe formation, resulting in low productivity and high costs of making these shaped food products.